Amazon Aurora | General Flashcards
What is Amazon Aurora?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
Amazon Aurora is a relational database engine that combines the speed and reliability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Amazon Aurora MySQL delivers up to five times the performance of MySQL without requiring any changes to most MySQL applications; similarly, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL delivers up to three times the performance of PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS manages your Amazon Aurora databases, handling time-consuming tasks such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection and repair. You pay a simple monthly charge for each Amazon Aurora database instance you use. There are no upfront costs or long-term commitments required.
What does “MySQL compatible” mean?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
It means that most of the code, applications, drivers and tools you already use today with your MySQL databases can be used with Aurora with little or no change. The Amazon Aurora database engine is designed to be wire-compatible with MySQL 5.6 using the InnoDB storage engine. Certain MySQL features like the MyISAM storage engine are not available with Amazon Aurora.
What does “PostgreSQL compatible” mean?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
It means that most of the code, applications, drivers and tools you already use today with your PostgreSQL databases can be used with Aurora with little or no change. The Amazon Aurora database engine is designed to be wire-compatible with PostgreSQL 9.6, and supports the same set of PostgreSQL extensions that are supported with RDS for PostgreSQL 9.6, making it easy to move applications between the two engines.
How do I try Amazon Aurora?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
To try Amazon Aurora, sign in to the AWS console, select RDS under the Database category, and choose Amazon Aurora as your database engine.
How much does Amazon Aurora cost?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
Please see our pricing page for current pricing information.
Amazon Aurora replicates each chunk of my database volume six ways across three Availability Zones. Does that mean that my effective storage price will be three or six times what is shown on the pricing page?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
No. Amazon Aurora’s replication is bundled into the price. You are charged based on the storage your database consumes at the database layer, not the storage consumed in Amazon Aurora’s virtualized storage layer.
In which AWS regions is Amazon Aurora available?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
Please see our pricing page for current information on regions and prices.
How can I migrate from MySQL to Amazon Aurora and vice versa?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
You have several options. You can use the standard mysqldump utility to export data from MySQL and mysqlimport utility to import data to Amazon Aurora, and vice-versa. You can also use Amazon RDS’s DB Snapshot migration feature to migrate an RDS MySQL DB Snapshot to Amazon Aurora using the AWS Management Console. Migration completes for most customers in under an hour, though the duration depends on format and data set size. For more information see the Amazon Aurora Data Export and Import Guide.
How can I migrate from PostgreSQL to Amazon Aurora and vice versa?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
You have several options. You can use the standard pg_dump utility to export data from PostgreSQL and pg_restore utility to import data to Amazon Aurora, and vice-versa. You can also use Amazon RDS’s DB Snapshot migration feature to migrate an RDS PostgreSQL 9.6 DB Snapshot to Amazon Aurora using the AWS Management Console. Migration completes for most customers in under an hour, though the duration depends on format and data set size. For more information see the Amazon Aurora Data Export and Import Guide.
Does Amazon Aurora participate in the AWS Free Tier?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
Not at this time. The AWS Free Tier for Amazon RDS offers benefits for Micro DB Instances; Amazon Aurora does not currently offer Micro DB Instance support. Please see our pricing page for current pricing information.
What are IOs in Amazon Aurora and how are they calculated?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
IOs are input/output operations performed by the Aurora database engine against its SSD-based virtualized storage layer. Every database page read operation counts as one IO. The Aurora database engine issues reads against the storage layer in order to fetch database pages not present in the buffer cache. Each database page is 16KB in Aurora MySQL and 8KB in Aurora PostgreSQL.
Aurora was designed to eliminate unnecessary IO operations in order to reduce costs and to ensure resources are available for serving read/write traffic. Write IOs are only consumed when pushing transaction log records to the storage layer for the purpose of making writes durable. Write IOs are counted in 4KB units. For example, a transaction log record that is 1024 bytes will count as one IO operation. However, concurrent write operations whose transaction log is less than 4KB can be batched together by the Aurora database engine in order to optimize I/O consumption. Unlike traditional database engines Amazon Aurora never pushes modified database pages to the storage layer, resulting in further IO consumption savings.
You can see how many IOs your Aurora instance is consuming by going to the AWS Console. To find your IO consumption, go to the RDS section of the console, look at your list of instances, select your Aurora instances, then look for the “Billed read operations” and “Billed write operations” metrics in the monitoring section.
Do I need to change client drivers to use Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
No, Amazon Aurora will work with standard PostgreSQL database drivers.
What is Amazon Aurora Serverless?
General
Amazon Aurora | Database
At re:Invent 2017, we announced the preview for Amazon Aurora Serverless, a new configuration of the MySQL-compatible edition that can save you valuable time, effort and cost by automatically scaling database capacity up and down to match your application needs.
